The Grant Study, the Professor and the Princess

As I noted earlier, dear reader, last week, not such a long time ago, Kate, Princess of Wales, along with Harvard Professor Robert Waldinger, co-authored a report called The Power of Connection In A Distracted World.
Sort of, anyway.
The Princess has an M.A. in the History of Arts from St Andrews. Her final year dissertation was "Angels from Heaven: Lewis Carroll's Photographic Interpretation of Childhood". You remember Lewis Carroll, and if you don't then you almost certainly know the word Jabberwocky, or at least you've heard of Alice In Wonderland. He was the man who, it's fair to say, took a close interest in a seven-year-old girl called Alice Hargreaves and took a lot of pictures of her, when he wasn't telling her stories. There is nothing inherently wrong with that - in 1841, when people had multiple children, they also knew that one in four of them (https://lnkd.in/eMfVdYX9.) would be dead before they got to be five years old. Photography was as exciting then as AI now. Of course he took pictures of young Alice; she might not have been around much longer and he could afford to do it.
I don't know if Kate Middleton's "co-author" Robert Waldinger read Alice In Wonderland. He is however, the current incumbent and guardian of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, also known as the Grant Study. It's been running since 1938, it's the oldest longitudinal study of children developing into adults in the known universe, it's still running, and it's surveyed thousands of people throughout their lives, including, by chance, John F. Kennedy.
The Grant Study is remarkably consistent. One of its findings is a core foundation of Pocket Money Cards: children helping with housework before the age of 14 become the most fulfilled, happy and healthy adults. Leave it until after the age of 14 and the opposite happens.
Obviously, the Adult Development Study is about more than how many kids mow the lawn or bring mouldering cups down to the kitchen after cultivating them under their bed for three weeks.
So far, 1,300 people have been involved in this research and the results, apart from the part about housework, are surprising. Prof. Waldinger said "Our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
Paying more attention to a mobile phone than to people in the same room isn't healthy, for children, adults or families. It's great that this news is getting some attention now.
It's just a pity that without a Princess signing it off, most people don't really care much what scientific research says.